I eventually managed to track down a copy of this book yesterday, and what a treat it is. Neil Gaiman to me is a little hit and miss – but he is undoubtedly a master of many different genres and styles, from science fiction to fantasy, dark gothic horror to light fairytale.

I recently complained that WALL-E felt like a kids movie. Well, this book is a children’s story, but is fantastic all the same. Nobody Owens’ family is murdered at the beginning of the book, and he is raised in a graveyard.

The book has been a long time in the coming, with Gaiman first having the idea in 1985, and has close parallels and allusions to the classic Kipling The Jungle Book. The book is well written at an easy level for children, invitingly descriptive, and each short chapter is a self contained short story of just the right length. The characters are well portrayed, and being mainly ghosts of people from times long gone, Gaiman is careful to give them only knowledge from their own eras. The protagonist Nobody ‘Bod’ Owens is not a ’straight as an arrow never getting in trouble’ child, but neither do you ever feel like strangling the obnoxious brat – both sides being all too common in the portrayal of growing children. If there is one complaint, it is that the main antagonist (who originally killed Bod’s family) is very vaguely sketched in. A little more depth here would have helped me, but it’s not unnatural for Gaiman to want to focus on his protagonist.

All around this is a nice quick, fulfilling read for an adult, with enough depth to keep you reading. I would still pick Anathem over this for the Hugo, but it would be a close thing.

4.5 stars.